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Re: What's up with Roger?



> I admit that I'm not much of a drama fan, so I'm not up on standards for
> dialog in plays.  I thought it conveyed the ideas very well, and left me
> digging for some of the meaning--both typical of Pete's writing.  Was
there
> something in particular that you disliked about it?

Basically I found it stilted and overly symbolic.  It's a problem with
balance.  I'll give you an example.  Tommy is a well-balanced work in that
its "pretentious" ideas and format are perfectly balanced on the record by
its spare production and in the live show by the aggressive power of The
Who.  That's what makes it such a powerful work.

Now imagine Tommy with lyrics that spell out every nuance of the story or
instrumentation that screams "this is art!"  The story unbalances.
Lifehouse '99 had that problem in the dialogue.  Basically it's a Twilight
Zone fantasy.  So the dialogue should be spare and evocative, just enough to
flesh out what's going on (and it certainly doesn't succeed on that level
when you're listening to it instead of reading the script) without
embellishing what is already an embellishment.  Realism is what you need to
balance the story's unreality.  Instead we get dialogue better suited for a
Stindberg symbolist play or 1920's-era Eugene O'Neill.  The only dialogue
that really works are the phone conversations between Ray and his wife that
sound uncomfortably like we're listening in on Pete and Karen's phone
conversations.

I like the central idea and it does meld the original with a new vision
(Jumbo/Brick as the hero rather than the villain) and meshes well with
Pete's other faux-autobiographical work in the '90's.  It just needed more
polishing.  Call rewrite!

-Brian in Atlanta
 The Who This Month!
 Go to: http://members.home.net/cadyb/who.htm